


Brooklyn, Brooklyn

by Darling_Pretty



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Character Development, Peggy moves to New York, after the war, like nothing happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 05:08:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6270799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darling_Pretty/pseuds/Darling_Pretty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, Peggy Carter moves to Brooklyn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brooklyn, Brooklyn

The war was over. Hitler, Hydra defeated. The world at peace, the world in celebration. But Peggy Carter? Peggy Carter was deeply in mourning.

She hadn’t cried at the ceremony honoring the fallen Captain America, though Dugan had held fast to her arm and the rest of the Commandos had been ready to spring at a moment’s notice to shield her from the prying eyes of the media. Not even Howard Stark’s money could have kept a weeping Peggy Carter out of the papers, not when any bit of scrutiny would have revealed her to be the mysterious woman in Cap’s compass.

She _did_ cry at the reception in a local tavern. Phillips was there, removed his cap and squeezed her hand, spoke of the deep respect he had for that “star spangled man with a plan” and then said he’d miss Steve. They all would. The Commandos murmured their agreement.

Howard had raised a glass and, in his always estimable ability to put his foot in his mouth, suggested “To Captain America.”

Dugan was ready to jump, but Peggy got there first, raising her own glass. “To _Steve Rogers_.” Howard hadn’t meant any harm; he’d loved Steve just as much as any of them.

Her voice cracked and within moments, Dugan had an arm around her waist, nearly lifting her off her feet, Morita had repeated the toast, and Howard, well, Howard had kissed her cheek and whispered “I miss him, Peg.”

She nodded, whispered back, “I miss him too, Howard. I miss him too.”

It wasn’t long before their little private ceremony was loud and raucous with the howling, drunken laughter of the Commandos as the wake turned Irish. They shared memories of the war, traded stories. It was everything Peggy could have hoped for. Steve wouldn’t have wanted them to be solemn. But Peggy kept her own memories held close, silent as she listened and shot pointed barbs at her friends every now and again. While everyone in that room had known that if Carter and Rogers were camped together, there really was only need of one sleeping bag, she didn’t want the memories of exhausted, lazy kisses and careful but desperate coupling to become public property. The crooked half smile he always gave her when he woke up to find her there, the way he’d always run his hands up and down her body once, as if to be sure she really was there. Those were hers and hers alone.

“So, war’s over. What’s next for you, Carter?” Phillips wanted to know.

“Peggy,” she insisted he call her now.

“Peggy. What’s next?”

What _was_ next? She supposed it was time to head back to England, to her home country. But there really wasn’t much left there; her mother had died before the war, father during. She had a ne’er-do-well brother off somewhere in London, but after the Blitz, perhaps she didn’t.

“I think I’ll go to Brooklyn,” she said, surprising even herself. But she’d said it and Phillips was off and running, talking about men he knew who could easily use her expertise. It was right, she thought. She wanted to really see Steve’s home, to really see what his childhood had been like. It would be a way to hold onto him, to his memory.

She arrived in Brooklyn two weeks later, settled into a flat, though it could hardly be called that given how incredibly small it was. Still it was home enough. And, in a way she couldn’t possibly predict, she fell in love with the city, with the noise and grime. Everything she remembered about Steve, everything she had loved—his scrappiness, his refusal to back down, even his sense of right and wrong—it all made sense when she saw his home.

She felt him there, in every brick, in every shouted greeting and obscenity. She wandered at times, when the SSR didn’t need her and she felt able to leave off. Here she found him. She looked at the streets as he might have, not as foreign and strange, but as home, and she fell as hard for New York as she had for Steve Rogers.

On Sundays outside her window, she could hear church bells. She wondered often if he’d gone to mass, if his mother had stuck him into starched collars, tamed his hair, carted him off to church as a child. Had he complained or was he devout? Or something in between, uncomplaining for his mother and anxious for the final prayer to be said? They’d never spoken about religion. God seemed far away in the mess of war. Peggy herself was lapsed Anglican and she made no attempt to rejoin any sort of faith.

Part of her thought her move to Brooklyn could be deemed unhealthy. It was hard to forget here, not when the city sang with his presence. It allowed her to hold him close. She let the city embrace her when he could not.

And so Brooklyn became her home as it was once his. She came to know faces, came to know names. She let the elderly woman who lived above her set her up with her son, because it was easier than resisting. He spent a good couple of months in her bed and then left. It was never serious and the split was natural. Summers came and went, sweltering and unyielding, winters cold and bitter. Peggy loved it.

One day, she’d move out, she imagined. Whether to be close to work or out to the suburbs to start a family, she would have to leave. But she’d never love anywhere like she loved Brooklyn. Brooklyn had taken her in, brought her a home when none was to be found. She belonged to Brooklyn as Steve had once. And she loved it for him when he could not.


End file.
